Read Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) for Free Online Page B

like June, I have a capacity for delicate perversions. The love of only one man or one woman is an enclosure.
    My conflict is going to be greater than June's, because she has no mind watching her life. Others do it for her, and she denies all they say or write. I have a mind which is bigger than all the rest of me, an inexorable conscience.
    Eduardo says, "Go and be psychoanalyzed." But that seems too simple. I want to make my own discoveries.
    I do not need drugs, artificial stimulation. Yet I want to experience those very things with June, to penetrate the evil which attracts me. I seek life, and the experiences I want are denied me because I carry in me a force which neutralizes them. I meet June, the near-prostitute, and she becomes pure. A purity which maddens Henry, a purity of face and being which is awesome, just as I saw her one afternoon in the corner of the divan, transparent, supernatural.
    Henry speaks to me of her extreme vulgarity. I know her lack of pride. Vulgarity gives the joy of desecrating. But June is not a demon. Life is the demon, possessing her, and their coition is violent because her voraciousness for life is enormous, a tasting of its bitterest flavors.
     
    After Henry's visit I began to tiger-pace the house and to say to Hugo I had to go away. There were outcries. "You are not really sick—just tired." But Hugo, as usual, understood, consented. The house suffocated me. I couldn't see people, I couldn't write, I couldn't rest either.
    Sunday Hugo took me out for a walk. We found some very large, deep rabbit holes. He playfully incited our dog Banquo to stick his nose in them, to dig. I felt a terrifying oppression, as if I had crawled into a hole and were stifling. I remembered many dreams I have had of being forced to crawl on my stomach, like a snake, through tunnels and apertures that were too small for me, the last one always smaller than all the others, where the anxiety grew so strong that it awakened me. I stood before the rabbit hole and shouted angrily at Hugo to stop. My anger baffled him. It was only a game, and with the dog.
    Now that the feeling of suffocation was so crystallized, I was determined to go away. At night, in Hugo's arms, my decision wavered. But I made all the preparations, careless ones, unlike my usual self. I didn't care about my appearance, clothes. I left hurriedly. To find myself. To find Hugo in myself.
     
    Sonloup, Switzerland. To Hugo I write: "Believe me, when I talk about living out all instincts, it is only steam. There are a lot of instincts that should not be lived out because they are decayed and putrid. Henry is wrong to despise D. H. Lawrence for refusing to plunge into unnecessary misery. The first thing June and Henry would do would be to initiate us into poverty, starvation, drabness just to share their sufferings. That is the weakest way of enjoying life: to let it whip you. By conquering misery we are creating a future independence of being such as they will never know. When you retire from the bank, darling, we will know a freedom they have never known. I'm a bit sick of this Russian wallowing in pain. Pain is something to master, not to wallow in.
    "I came here to seek my strength, and I find it. I'm fighting. This morning I saw young, tall, thick silhouettes of skiers, with heavy boots, and their slow, conquering walk was like a gust of power. Defeat is only a phase for me. I must conquer, live. Forgive me for the suffering I inflict on you. At least it will never be useless suffering."
    I lie in bed, half-asleep, playing possum. This fortress of calm which I erect against the invasion of ideas, against fever, is like down. I sleep in the down, and the ideas press in on me, insistently. I want to understand slowly. And I begin: June, you have destroyed reality. Your lies are not lies to you; they are conditions you want to live out. You have made greater efforts than any of us to live out illusions. When you told your husband that your mother